roryedd

[roryedd]

A young man's virtual life and real life become inextricably entwined when a player named Surewinter reaches out to him for help on a popular VRPG game, only to be discovered dead the next morning—her body washed up face down in a canal.

Now a suspect, he's forced to navigate Abaddon Online, an illegal underground VR game where what's real and what's virtual is sometimes hard to discern, and clear his name before he becomes the next victim. He must earn the trust of a new guild, overcome the players set to kill him, and keep the true killer from knowing that he's closing in.

Read for free at https://royalroadl.com/fiction/14117/surewinter-abaddon-online-book-1

[roryedd]

Messages

A November breeze swept over Henry and he instinctively held a paper cup full of warm coffee just a bit closer to his chest. He had been in line for nearly twelve hours. Morning broke slowly, and he watched beams of piercing morning light shine down the street and reflect brightly off of store windows.

Henry took a sip and allowed the hot steam to warm his face. He couldn’t leave his spot, so he had bought the coffee from a vendor walking down the line. Henry wished he had offered him cream, but the warmth and much-needed caffeine were good enough.

Henry glanced down at his phone to help pass the time.

“What does it say?” came a soft voice from behind him.

Henry turned around. “Excuse me?”

“You checked the time, right? What time is it?” asked a girl wrapped in a big purple scarf and a heavy winter coat. She appeared to be in her early twenties, like Henry.

“Uh, it’s about six.”

“Then the sun’s about to come up, thank goodness! It’s way too cold.” The girl thrust her mittened hand out to Henry. “My name is Georgia, what’s yours?”

Henry held out his right hand, and realized he was still holding the coffee. Georgia’s face brightened as Henry fumbled with the cup until he finally shook her hand. “My name’s Henry.”

“So, what do you think, Henry? Will the device really work?” asked Georgia.

Henry looked toward the front of the line and couldn’t make out where it started—a thousand bodies all collected into an endless swarm of people, all pressing forward, all buzzing with the same nervous excitement.

“I don’t know,” Henry replied. “I hope it works, if just to make all this waiting worth it.”

Georgia sat down, and Henry followed suit. Finishing the last sip of his coffee, Henry sat the empty cup down beside him; the emerging sun had taken away some of the chill.

“I heard the device can record your thoughts, even your dreams! Can you imagine? Waking up and watching your dreams?” asked Georgia.

Henry looked at her, her face tucked safely in the hood of her jacket. “I think the device can do a lot of amazing things, but I think there’s one reason all of these people are here—the messages.”

The device was only designed to be an amazing new gadget with the ability to sync to the brainwaves of its user. Think of a face, the device could call that person. Dictate a message by

thought, then save it or send it. Set reminders for important events simply by focusing on the date and time.

As amazing as those innovations were, they weren’t what had millions of people across the world lined up to get one. It was what would happen in twenty years, by some not-yet-developed quirk in future versions of the device.

What would I say, thought Henry, if I had the chance to say something to my past self? Twenty years ago, Henry would have been five years old. What information would a five-year-old need

to know—what would a five-year-old understand about a world so far off?

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Georgia fiddling with the tassels of her jacket. “What do you think yours will say?”

“Just hope it’s not stock tips!” said a man walking by. He was wearing a pressed blue suit beneath a long black coat. “I’ve spent the last day waiting in this stupid line, and I’m sick of it. My associates in New York have told me that they’re all getting the same information, and stocks have exploded. Buy this, or sell that—now all of those stocks are nearly a thousand dollars a share; it’s insanity! Don’t even get me started on the lottery, several million winners today, leaving just pennies for each person.”

“Did anyone you know get something besides financial tips?” asked Georgia.

The businessman stood straight and appeared to calm a bit, and adjusted his collar. “A friend of mine said he was given a date with the message to turn right instead of left. How is that supposed to make someone feel, forever wondering what you’re trying to avoid? If that’s not enough to drive a man insane I don’t know what is. This isn’t for me, the future isn’t supposed to be known—that’s why it’s the future!” He threw his hands in the air and stormed off, cursing to himself under his breath.

Georgia turned to Henry. “Maybe his friend still can turn left, and maybe he should. Some people are saying that there will be a new timeline, one different from the people who sent the messages. Or hey,” said Georgia with a smirk, “maybe turning right will make things worse.”

Henry fell back into his head and tried to envision each tiny step in his life that could have been different, each time he could have turned right instead of left, and how much his life would change. He thought back to every poor decision—the time he crashed his dad’s car, the moment he dropped out of college, and when he broke a girl’s heart. It made his stomach sink and his head ache.

“I guess I just hope mine isn’t lottery numbers,” said Henry, forcing a smile. “What about you? What soaring and infinite wisdom are you hoping to have sent yourself?”

Georgia looked up to the sky and contemplated the question as if the answer lay deep inside her. “I kind of want to know if I’ll ever make it with my art, or . . . well, I just hope she tells me she found the courage to be happy.”

Georgia paused and took a deep breath, “I applied to some art schools, but I was rejected. It hurts, you know, to hear that something you’re passionate about maybe isn’t what you should be doing. I want to know that they were wrong, and I guess I’m just looking for permission to keep going.” Georgia closed her eyes and turned away.

Henry, now uncomfortable, rubbed the back of his neck. He hadn’t meant to upset her. Hearing Georgia’s story reminded him that he wasn’t sure what he wanted his message to say. There were so many people, all sorts of people, all hoping for something.

Some would want success, or fame, or money, or love. Everyone was looking for a dose of clarity in a sea of uncertainty—a way to escape the fear of the unknown.

Henry could hear the rustling of people standing up echo off the buildings across the street. He looked ahead—the line was so long, he could hear people moving before he could see them. He waited until the people in front of him got up, and then he rose behind them. And like one great wave it continued behind him and out of sight.

The next few hours of waiting were agonizing. From what he understood, the store had to calibrate each device by putting a hood filled with diodes, lights, and receptors on each person’s head. Once the device was synced up to the user’s brainwaves, it would begin to receive information. And in just two decades from today, users would be able to send a thought, a short and simple sentence, back to their devices—all of their devices. The messages didn’t travel through time, but instead existed at a higher state where the past, present, and future occurred simultaneously.

Henry and Georgia watched as people passed by, their faces grim. “Why do they look so sad? What did their messages say?” said Georgia. A man and woman with linked arms overheard. The man stopped dead in his tracks and looked back at her, his eyes red from barely restrained tears.

“My wife’s message said ‘leave him before the cancer,’” said the man somberly.

“What did yours say?” said Georgia to the man.

“I didn’t get one.” He turned to the woman beside him. Her expression didn’t change and she didn’t look back. He looked down, his face cold, and they continued walking again.

Georgia retreated into her jacket, and looked at Henry. “I don’t think this is right,” said Georgia. She peeled back her hood revealing long locks of curly brown hair, which she shook violently. “Maybe they’re right, maybe our future shouldn’t be known.”

“But I have to know,” replied Henry. “You would miss knowing your own future?”

“If it makes me like them, then yes,” she said, surveying the crowd of dreary people as they lifelessly marched from the store like mourners at a funeral procession, their hopes and excitement expired.

“Hasn’t anyone gotten good news?” asked Henry loudly. His eyes locked on each person as they passed by.

A woman looked up briefly and peered back towards Henry. “These are our mistakes. What could you tell yourself after twenty years that could possibly fix them?” And she continued on.

As news of the messages spread, people started to disperse and the line began to move much faster. “It’s only one possible version of future events,” some said. Others became fearful they would worry about events that wouldn’t occur or, more troubling, act on information that would make matters worse. “Better not to know,” they murmured, but didn’t sound convinced.

Finally, after nearly a full day of waiting, it was Henry’s turn. Henry stepped through the door apprehensively. The space was bare, stark white and brightly lit, forcing him to shield his eyes. An employee dressed all in white directed him to a chair and sat him down while another accepted his payment. He heard one say that he was placing an electroencephalographer over his head, and his world went dark.

He latched onto the word—electroencephalographer. The hood, he thought, and allowed the strange-sounding word to roll through his mind. Slowly, he succumbed to an uncomfortable feeling of claustrophobia coupled with the odd sensation of a million tiny pricks across his scalp. He could feel the pressure of one of the white-clad employee’s hands on his shoulder, holding him still.

In the distance he could hear Georgia politely declining a device. Was she the smart one? He thought. Did he really need to know his future? A million questions filled his mind. Will there even be a message? Will I be alive in twenty years? Will it tell me about a future relationship, or maybe a wife? Will it warn me about cancer? Do I have cancer now?

Henry’s hands started to sweat. The darkness, the tightening grip on his shoulder, and the fear and uncertainty started to overwhelm him. The pricks began to feel like daggers. Henry’s chair shot up, the hood torn from his face, and he was left noticeably disoriented. “Here you go, sir! Thanks for coming,” said a white-clad employee.

Still reeling from the experience, he stumbled out of the store. He looked down at the tiny device, and wondered how such a small thing could cause so much misery. On the screen there flashed a tiny green box.

1 New Message

Henry stuffed the device in his pocket without opening the message. Georgia was sitting on a curb across the street, her arms wrapped around her legs, and her jacket folded beside her.

Henry walked over to her.

“Are you all right?”

“I decided not to get one,” said Georgia.

“I overheard.”

“I’ve decided that I don’t need someone to tell me whether or not I can do what I love. Not a school, and not a silly message. I’m going to do it because it’s what I want to do, and my destiny will be decided by me—not by anyone else, and not by a message from the future,” she said. She collected her jacket and looked back up at Henry. “What about you, what did yours say?”

“I didn’t look.” Henry retrieved the device from his pocket and held it out to her. “Here, you look.”

“No, I don’t want to,” said Georgia, waving it away. “It’s a message sent to you, from you. It’s not for anyone but you. Plus, I doubt it would make sense to me.”

“I kind of hope it is lottery numbers,” said Henry, holding the device cautiously in his hands like it was a loaded weapon.

“Read it. You went through all that work! Besides, I need to find a resolution vicariously through you,” Georgia smirked.

Henry allowed himself a small laugh, and timidly activated the screen on his device. Again, an alert flashed that he had one message. He raised his finger up to the device slowly and he paused.

The moment of doubt proved futile and he clicked the message. He allowed each word its own moment to sink in deeply with the gravity it deserved.

Everything will work out.

“What does it say?” she asked.

“What I needed to hear,” said Henry, finally exhaling, allowing himself a satisfactory smile. “Are you hungry? There’s a great place to get some breakfast just down the street—I was planning on going there afterwards anyway, and I’d like it if you came along.”

“Yeah,” replied Georgia, scrunching up her nose and beaming brightly. “I’d like that, too.”

[roryedd]

Like Pigs

We lost the baby. With it I feared we’d also lost hope. But as long as we had each other—there would always be hope. We’d survive.

I stayed with Maizy at the camp for the next few days. While the others worked I maintained the camp. Maizy mostly slept, and sometimes cried softly. I didn’t know what else to do.

I met Maizy before the Flash. We watched movies together and fell in love. She laughed at my jokes, and I held her when she talked about abuse she had endured. She was so young, so beautiful, and so fragile. We bonded, and I knew I would be there for her, to take care of her.

After the Flash, we fled together into the wilderness where it was still safe. She was afraid, but I comforted her—we had each other. We had taken what my parents had handed down to me, some brightly colored suburban camping gear, colorful red and green ski jackets, and some basic supplies and canned food. Nothing that prepared us, and we had nothing that would sustain us. We were novices in a savage world we knew nothing about.

Soon after, we met Dan and Sara. She was a nurse. He was an accountant. They were thin, bookish people we found living in a dilapidated cabin, the roof rotten and collapsing. They weren’t familiar with the outdoors, but they were smart. We lent them our extra tent and spared our canned food, and with them, we moved further into the woods. Like us, they had fled the city. And like us, there were woefully unprepared for the challenges in the wilderness.

We agreed on where we would go. Over the mountains was an old fort beside a freshwater lake. But the mountains were big, and our energy was spent. I didn’t know how long it might take us, but if we rationed our food, I felt we might have a chance.

Weeks later, following the smell of a campfire we encountered Kirk. He was hunting, armed with a rifle. Something we’d never done, with something none of us ever used. He had his hair cut short, and a thick, square jaw. He accepted us, and brought us to the camp where his wife Elisa was preparing a porcupine he had killed. She was half his size, but athletic, and seemed more at home in the woods than any of us. They were excellent hunters, and we were weak from weeks of canned vegetables—they became our saviors.

Sitting alongside Maizy, in our little yellow tent, I heard Dan and Sara arrive at the camp first. Looking out I noticed they didn’t look pleased with themselves.

“No luck today,” said Dan.

Sara plopped herself down, exhausted beside the fire, her mess of blonde hair evidence of how long we had been denied the privileges of civilization.

“We’re too far from the roads. If we can’t find a road we’re not going to be able to scavenge anything worthwhile,” said Sara, attempting to run her hand through her hair, her face twisting into frustration. “God, I’d kill for a bar of soap.”

“You know the roads aren’t safe,” I said.

Dan rubbed his temple. “We have nothing,” he said, frustrated. “We could have made it, but if we go another two days without food we won’t have a choice. It’s find something or starve. Kirk hasn’t found anything to hunt, and it’s going to be cold soon.”

He was agitated. We all were. I think Dan was unhappy we joined Kirk and Elisa. With our limited food we were barely getting by, and without any successful hunts, there wasn’t enough for the six of us. I knew he also blamed me. I had been staying in camp since Maizy’s miscarriage, and refused to leave her. But I wouldn’t let her give up, I needed her too much.

Even before the Flash I wasn’t much of a meat eater. If it wasn’t for the convenience of fast food, I wouldn’t have eaten meat at all. But as we starved I began to eat rabbits, then squirrels, and now nothing. We were starving fast, and could feel the energy leaving us. After the Flash life was diminishing all around us. Even the trees were turning gray, and as they bent sorrowfully around us we were dying, and we were forced to watch the world die around us too.

“We still have the lake,” I told Dan. It was all I had, a far-off hope that kept me optimistic that a way to survive existed beyond the mountains, near the Indian reservation.

“There’s a stream, we can follow that,” said Dan. “But we’re going to have to risk the roads eventually to resupply. We can’t go on like this indefinitely. We’re nearly out of food.”

I looked over to Maizy, still asleep in our tent. I wasn’t ready to risk it, not yet. We’d be safe out here. She was balled up, covered in an open sleeping bag. The only part of her visible was her tangled red hair creeping out from beneath it.

Screams broke my focus, and I looked up from Maizy. Reaching for an old camp shovel I shot up to defend myself, and panned the treeline surrounding the camp.

It was Kirk, his bright orange jacket stuck out between the dull green of the trees, and he had his wife, Elisa, in his arms.

“Jesus, help us!’ He screamed as he weaved through the branches towards camp.

I froze and watched as Dan retrieved a blanket from his tent for Elisa. Kirk dropped to his knees and softly laid her down on it. She was shaking, and slick with blood.

“It was an Ambush, man. A goddamn ambush! There’s someone in the trees,” cried Kirk, his face red and eyes swollen with tears.

I was nearly knocked down as Sara forced herself past me with the first aid kit, and dropping down she tossed the kit to Dan, and began inspecting Elisa.

Kirk, sitting over her bloody body, ran the back of his blood-stained hand across his nose, smearing it across his face, sniffling, and in a trembling voice said, “I didn’t see. I couldn’t see. Save her, man. Save her.”

“You need to keep her calm,” pleaded Sara. “There’s an arrow. It’s pierced her lung.”

Kirk went quiet, and shut his eyes hard, forcing out tears, and he pulled back Elisa’s bangs, leaving a swath of blood across her forehead, and kissed her gently. He whispered that she was going to be okay, that she was going to make it. I had never seen him lie to her before.

She convulsed, her breathing slow, the arrow still standing straight up from her chest.

She passed out not long after, and Dan kept a vigil with her the rest of the night as she slipped away.

I buried her while the others rested. They were exhausted, and I felt I had to. Her grave had to be shallow because the cold ground proved too hard after just a few feet. We began packing camp and then met at her grave and Sara said a pleasant eulogy. We took turns saying something nice about her. I said she was an excellent runner. I should have said something better.

Kirk didn’t talk. And after the funeral, he silently gathered his rifle, his ammo, and their gear—his gear.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

Kirk looked around indignantly towards the treeline. “There’s someone out there. We need to move camp.”

I turned to face my little yellow tent—Maizy still within. “We can’t move yet.”

Kirk slung the rifle over his shoulder. “Then stay here. But I’m going to go find the person that killed Elisa. God help me when I do, but I’m going to find them.”

Dan approached from behind me, his face somber. “It will be night soon, Kirk. Just wait.”

“Wait for what? They’re out there!” cried Kirk. “What if they come here, who will they kill next? Maybe all of us. We need to get them now, while they’re still close.”

“Dan,” I said. “Will you and Sara watch Maizy for me?”

“Of course,” said Dan.

I looked back to Kirk. “I’ll come with you.” I didn’t want to leave Maizy, but this was my fault. If I had been out there with them, then maybe—maybe we could have saved her.

“Wait,” said Sara, rushing over. In her hands was the arrow. “The tip is stone,” she said. And she handed it to me.

It was wood, dried blood still soaked into the shaft. The end was made from bird feathers, and at the tip was a stone arrowhead, haphazardly carved into a jagged point.

“Whoever they are, whatever they are,” began Sara, “They’ve been out here a long time.”

“I don’t care who they are,” said Kirk, shooting his gaze to me, his eyes sunken and cold, deep pools drained of tears. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Dan, Sara, watch Maizy for me. Please… take care of her.”

They both nodded.

“Don’t worry about Maizy,” said Sara. “I have something I can give her to help her sleep while you’re gone. She’ll be fine.”

We head out with the sun behind us, and watch it slowly fade into the distance. The night sky didn’t go dark anymore, and there were no stars. Instead, it lit up with a colorful dance of charged particles bombarding the atmosphere—a global Northern Lights caused by the Flash. Kirk had his rifle, and I carried his ammo and some supplies. The forest was wasting away, turning into a thick wrestle of branches that clawed at us as we moved through them.

Kirk would stop, lean down, sift through the fallen leaves, then rise up and keep going. He continued doing it for hours. I didn’t speak, and allowed him to continue his chase unabated, he deserved to right to find closure with what happened to Elisa. I don’t know who was out here, but I assumed they must be long gone by now.

A branch snapped in the distance and Kirk dropped to the forest floor. He shot a look back to me and quietly shushed me, signaling for me to get down with a raised hand.

Slinging his rifle down from over his shoulder he readied it in front of him, and began to look around.

There was nothing.

We continued on, and stayed up high, keeping a ravine to our side so nothing could sneak up on us. The lights illuminated the way, and I watched the greenish hues billow and wave across the sky. Kirk didn’t. He was focused on the trail ahead, searching for his wife’s killer.

“Kirk,” I said.

He didn’t respond and continued his high-stepping march over the brush.

“Kirk, we need to go back.”

He finally turned around. We hadn’t spoken since we began. “I’m not going back,” he said, and turned, continuing on. “The camp is compromised. You can go back if you want, but I’m not.”

“Kirk, you have the only gun, we need you at camp. We have to go back.”

Kirk stopped. He straightened and spun to face me. “Go, go ahead! I’m not going back.”

“There are people who need you there. We can’t survive without you, and you can’t survive without us.”

“Oh?” Kirk snapped, “I need you to survive? Did Elisa need you to survive? Ever since we met you, you’ve been a drain on everyone else. You and your girlfriend, sitting at camp, contributing nothing. I got the food, I’ve got the gun.” He lifted up his rifle, and waved it in my face.

I grabbed at the gun, holding it firmly and lowering it from my face. “We have to go back.”

“I can’t go back there,” he screamed. “Elisa’s there…”

Kirk turned, but I wouldn’t release my grip on his gun. “Please, we need you at camp. Maizy will be ready to head out soon.”

“Your girlfriend is as good as dead. What has she done? She’s finished, and does nothing but mope around. It’s better that you just drop that dead weight while you still can.”

“She’s fine, she’s getting better. We can move as soon as she’s ready.”

“You don’t get it! She’s done. Dan and Sara don’t know how to survive, and you’re too afraid of being alone to make the hard decisions. You’re selfish. I’m done with them, and I’m done with you. Go back to camp if you want. I’m going to find who killed Elisa.”

I tightened my grip on the gun. “I can’t let you leave us without the gun. We need it.”

“Get your own damn gun.”

“Kirk, I can’t let you take it with you.”

“Let go of it. I’m warning you.”

Kirk sent a knee into my gut, and I doubled over. I grabbed the stock with my other hand, and Kirk tried to wrench it from me, sending a shot into the distance, echoing through the silent wood.

Rising up I kicked off with my feet, putting all of my strength into my shoulder, trying to force him to the ground. He stepped back, and struggled against me. Every time I pushed, he would take another step back, bracing himself.

After another step back he finally fell. And he kept falling.

Losing my grip on the rifle I watched him tumble down the ravine. The sickly green glow of the light illuminated his face, his hands both holding tightly to the gun, refusing to reach out for something to stop his descent. And with no words, he hit the sharp edge of the ravine, and he was gone. His pack, his rifle, and him.

I walked back to camp alone that night and spent the time thinking about Maizy. And the Flash.

It was a solar flare. Maizy and I had been together for almost three months at the time. I was at her place, and we were getting ready for work when the news broadcasts said we had seven hours before the world would be set on fire. The Flash had a sound, like churning gears grinding loose bolts, and it had a smell like burnt metal. It had burned away any matter it came in contact with, and before it hit us, we could smell it coming.

Many thought it was a message from god—that the rapture had come. They stood out in the streets, with their eyes wide open, waiting to be lifted into the sky. They stood out and danced, and stared up shouting, “God, take us. God, come take us!”

It knocked out satellites first, then a mass electromagnetic pulse that shut down anything electronic. There was no radio, no television, no phone calls, and the world went silent, and in that time every person prepared for the end. It struck Asia, sparing the rest of the Earth for a slow, painful death.

I hid with Maizy at the restaurant where she was waitressing. He had locked ourselves in the basement freezer, where there was enough room for us. Generators kept the freezer working, and its thick walls protected us from the initial rush of heat and radiation.

The strength of its effects were global, and when we emerged onto the city streets the sky was still lit up in a wash of light. The skyscrapers above us had their windows blown out, and six feet of glass littered the streets. The people who had witnessed it were incinerated, and those that survived were burned and blinded. They crawled on their hands and knees through six feet of glass. They were blind, bloody, and screaming—still crying out for god. Fires raged, and the people who were looting continued, killing anyone in their way.

We took what we could and escaped. The city wasn’t safe, and the world around us was dying. The only way to survive was to stay together.

When I returned to camp day had broken. I was out of water, and weighed down by ammunition for a gun we no longer had.

Tired, my legs aching, I was ready to lay down beside Maizy. I didn’t see Peter or Sara. There was blood in the camp, splattered across the ground in dried brown stains. But I was too tired, too focused on Maizy. I crawled into our tiny yellow tent, and laid my head down beside her, and fell asleep.

When I awoke I leaned over Maizy, but she was still. I leaned her over and her head dropped to the side, her jaw agape. Beside her was the bottle of Sara’s sleeping pills. The bottle was empty.

I could have cried, or screamed, or something. But instead, I sat up and stared at her. I must have done that for an hour. Then I began lifting up the blankets. Then tearing at them. Then shoving her lifeless body, lifting it up and looking beneath it. There must be more pills, I thought. My teeth clenched, and my brow sweaty I began to destroy what had been our home. Please, please, let there be enough for me.

Rising up from the tent I walked through the camp. It felt like a dream. Following the dried blood stains, I found Peter. He had two arrows in him, and had fallen over one of our camp chairs, his feet still in the air.

I removed my shirt and jacket, ridding myself of its bright neon colors, and retrieved the camp shovel. Following the blood trail, I discovered Sara’s clothes and her intestines. She had been disemboweled here and dragged off.

Tightening my grip on the shovel I continued on. Following the blood trail that slowly dried up, it was replaced with footprints I could see in the still, grey ground.

The smell of cooking started to permeate the air. The same smell I had grown used to as Kirk prepared fresh kills he had collected. And I followed it up to a small bare hill, smoke rising from a fire near the center.

As I approached, my shirtless skin exposed to the cold air, I could see an old woman behind the smoke, preparing raw, bloody meat.

I stalked up to her, and raised my shovel. She was old, her skin cracked, and wore a blanket draped over her shoulders. She looked up from beneath a heavy brow, her lips thin, and unwavering. She didn’t look surprised I had found them, or concerned over what I was about to do.

Out from behind her came a man with a hand axe. He was my size, with bronze skin and long, black hair pulled back in a ponytail. He stood for a moment and stared at me. He looked to the woman, then body she was preparing, and then back to me.

He lunged, swinging at me, and I caught his axe with the camp shovel, twisting my wrist and bringing the axe beside me, grazing my side. As his momentum forced him to descended forward I fell upon him. Locking my legs around his ribs I began swinging the shovel down on his head as hard as I could. I continued until I heard a crunch, and didn’t stop until it caved in and its contents poured out onto the dirt.

I stood up, the blood—not all mine—dripping from my bare skin. Lifting the shovel with my free arm I struck the old woman. She didn’t move, and didn’t cry out. And I didn’t stop until I knew she was dead.

I stood motionless, my head sunk down and my chest rising and falling as the adrenaline left me. I was alone again. I wish they had killed me like they had killed the others. I wish they had taken me first. The hope was gone.

Through the brush near their tents came a woman. In her arm was a small child, pressed close to her chest. In her other was a knife pointed at me in her trembling hand.

She was Maizy’s age. Dark skinned, and her black hair hung free down her shoulders. She, like us, had been surviving out in the wilderness, doing whatever she could to survive.

I looked back at the body of the young man. His head a wash of blood with white specks of skull flowing out into a pool growing beneath him.

I looked back to the woman. “There’s a lake,” I said.

She continued shaking, the knife still pointed at me.

“There’s a fort there.”

She dropped the knife and began weeping. Holding her baby with both arms she dropped to her knees.

“Come with me.”

She didn’t look up, but I could see her slowly nodding her head. And I realized that as long as we had each other—there would be hope. We’d survive.

See the whole anthology:

https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Science-Fiction-Anthology-Future-ebook/dp/B0744GHMRY

[roryedd]

The Signal

It came to me first as a hum, a din that that repeated in the back of my mind. Over the years it grew, etching its cruel rhythm in my brain until it crashed into a crescendo—beckoning me towards an imperative I didn’t understand. Until, finally, it could no longer be ignored.

I was young when it started, my mind still malleable. It came unobtrusively enough. Like an earworm one day on the playground. A marching, driving rhythm that was muffled, dim, and distant. I asked my classmates if they could hear the far-off sound. They shook their heads, and I thought they must be playing a trick on me.

Over time I grew accustomed to it. It settled there in the back of my mind, and for years it lived there, a subtle din that became so common I rarely noticed it at all.

Years later, in my first year of college, the signal increased in intensity. It rocked between my ears, humming, driving. I couldn’t focus on anything but the sound. My grades slunked until they were unsalvageable, and dejected, I returned home.

At twenty years old I got my first CT scan. They said there was nothing wrong with me, that I was normal. Maybe they were right. I was normal, and it wasn’t my fault I was chosen. But I was, and while there was nothing special, or different, or wrong with me, I was the one who could hear it. So maybe I was better than normal. Maybe I was special after all, and the song played just for me.

At twenty-two I suffered my first seizure, and that lead to my second CT scan. I was told that the sound was a psychosis, that the signal was a phantom sound—concocted by my subconscious and manifested as an auditory hallucination. That was the last time I sought help from a doctor.

At twenty-five I thought that my hearing might be divine, that it was my fault for believing there was a medical explanation. By now the sound was a roar. I visited mediums, psychics, and witches. Some tumbled oddly-formed and colorful crystals across a table, consulted ornately decorated cards, or burned all manner of pleasant-smelling herbs in my presence. If I can say one thing about them, they were more willing to listen, but the sound continued to march on, and I was no closer to a cure, or at the very least—an answer.

I took six different medications, each one with its own severe side effect that left my mind cloudy and my body weak. They were all to treat conditions I didn’t have, but I was willing to try. The chemicals would sometimes change the signal, increase or slow down its tempo, but never stop it. And it continued to grow. The seizures became commonplace then, the signal breaking my mind when it would not bend.

At twenty-seven I could feel the signal overpowering the medication. It had grown in its resolve, crashing in my head with an undeniable sense of urgency—while the strength of the medication diminished more and more each day. The seizures then were at their worst, leaving me shaken and terrified to leave my home.

I broke down at twenty-nine and flushed the pills down the toilet. They were denying me from the music. I was chosen to hear it. It was for me. It didn’t speak to them, it only spoke to me, and they were jealous.

When I stopped taking them it was like being introduced to some universal truth. My mind was opened wide for the first time. The signal wanted something, and I was too weak to deny it. At thirty I got to work.

It started simply enough, grab this or grab that, melt them down, mix them together. I didn’t know what I was making, but as I obeyed the signal changed and adapted like the bridge of a melody you never forget. So as I worked it rewarded me. It changed from a constant, teeth-grinding march to a symphony, the music poured in with an illuminating melody. I felt enraptured, and as I obeyed it gave me the new, sweet rhythms of a new beat.

I started it in my bedroom, a small space in an apartment I shared with a friend. Not long after I lost my job and devoted every waking hour to the signal. I rented a storage unit and continued my work, sleeping on a sheet I kept in the corner when I couldn’t bear to stay awake, sneaking out at dusk for what little bit of food I could scavenge for free.

The parts that seemed hard were simple, the device was powered by just two car batteries. The simple parts were hard, filaments had to be comprised of a gold alloy that was impossible to buy, but not too difficult to steal. The rest of the machine was simply a vat filled with a saltwater solution I created and a few mechanical devices.

It wasn’t exceptionally large, barely bigger than a refrigerator, and covered in metal coils and wires. Many of the components used some form of induction that I built, even if I didn’t understand, that allowed electrical impulses to reach every part of the machine without a connection.

I don’t know how much time had passed. Years, maybe. Homeless, starving, sleeping on the floor of a tiny storage unit. But eventually, it was completed.

The last request of the rhythmic signal beckoned me inside. I complied, and stepped into the dark cavity. Retrieving a sharpened piece of metal scrap from my back pocket the signal began to drum. Louder and louder. I paused, but it was futile, and I drove the metal blade across my palm, blood pouring out uncontrollably. I could hear it drip into the water below, echoing along with my own breath in the dark, otherwise silent chamber.

Stepping out, I switched it on.

The signal stopped. There was nothing in my ears. I lost a piece of myself in that moment. It was like being deprived of color.

The device was lifeless—it made no sound, and emitted no light. For a device of unknown origin, made of some materials I had never witness until I made them myself, I guess I had assumed something more extravagant. There was only a slight vibration as the mechanical arms inside began toiling within.

The eerie silence was overwhelming, and I sat in the dark with the machine as it fulfilled its purpose—whatever that was. I knew it was running, I had turned it on, but it worked in total silence. It took two days before it stirred. A latch, built on the inside, clicked, and the door on the front of the machine slowly opened.

What slinked out, the saltwater running down its frame and dripping onto the concrete floor, was lithe and crooked, with taut skin over a skeletal frame and an array of small appendages running the length of its abdomen, subtlely twitching. It took in a gulp of air, closing its bulbous eyes tightly as it swallowed, as if it was its first.

It rose slowly, standing a foot taller than me, and raised a hand that ended in long, slender fingers. It placed its cold, wet hand against my face. I was scared, frozen solid, but I was curious, I had to know why I was chosen. So I didn’t pull away.

It grasped me by the neck, hard, choking me, and lifted me off the ground. I struggled, grabbing its arm, still slick with saltwater, and impossibly strong for how bone-thin it was. It took me in close, forcing me to look into its sunken face filled with two massive, cloudy orbs, and it investigated me, turning me from side to side as I gasped for air.

As the room began to go dark it cast me away, dropping me into the corner of the small storage unit. As I passed out I remember him turning around, and activating the machine again. As I faded into darkness I caught a glimpse of the long mechanical arms inside working away like an organic loom, building another creature.

I awoke back in silence. It was uncomfortable for me. I had never felt alone—unimportant. Trapped in an unfamiliar silence. The storage unit was empty save for a few scattered tools and some scrap. The creature, and the device, were gone.

I leave the television set on now. I set it to channels that don’t exist, and find comfort in the snowy static. After the event my life returned to what I could only describe as normalcy. I found a job. I went back to school. And I got on with my life.

But sometimes I wonder about where it went. And why I was chosen to receive the signal—to build the machine. Sometimes I wonder if crossing the vast distances of space and time might be too difficult, too far to travel, and and how it might be simpler to just have someone build you at the destination.

See the whole anthology:

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[roryedd]

I Will, I Swear

I rode in my first plane when I was eight. I remember having a million questions, and chewing handfuls of gum because my mother told me it would help reduce the pressure in my ears. I asked how it stayed in the air through my engorged cheeks, refusing to sit still, and I guess she told me the answer. I was too excited to listen.

We arrived in Chicago late at night after a brief storm. I marveled at the yellow glow cast by the streetlights on the slick roads and sidewalks, giving a warm glow to the city. I had never been out of the suburbs, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the magnificent buildings full of light.

We were asked to attend my grandparent’s 50th anniversary, and the hotel was selected for the family reunion by my great-aunt. She permanently resided on the top floor. It was a very old hotel, the kind with red velvet curtains and gold tassels. A thin veneer of dust that dulled what must have been a vibrant place that catered to American royalty in its prime.

My father was the oldest of his siblings, giving me a headstart on my cousins, so I was relegated to the toddler section with them. I wasn’t old enough for what they deemed adult conversation. I sat with my snotty little brother while my parents mingled and drank with my extended family.

They were Irish and Catholic and drunk, and before too long they were laughing hysterically in the reserved parlor. Frequently I would get pulled aside, my head patted, my cheeks pinched, and have relatives I’ve never met refer to me as “the middle” for my station among my own brother and sister. Once the adults had their fill, I was able to slink away and sit quietly in a corner where I spent the rest of the night pilfering handfuls of cheese from the snack tray.

My mother, young then, in a black dress and drenched in whatever perfume was popular at the time, stumbled over to me and told me that my grandfather wanted me to meet my great-aunt. That she had specifically requested me.

I was wearing an ill-fitting suit my parents had purchased for me just before the trip. “You’ll grow into it,” they said. I pressed the sides neatly down, doing my best to look presentable, and stood up, searching the crowd for her. My mother shook her head and took my hand, “No,” she said, “She’s in her room, I’ll take you.”

My mother guided me out of the parlor and straight to the elevators. She looked irritated, dearly wishing to return to the party, but I was content to obey, and happy to get away from the crowd of inebriated adults.

Exiting the elevator we continued down a long hall flanked by white marble accents that reflected the translucent pearl light fixtures and made the antique halls look like the inside of an oyster.

At the end of the hall was my great-aunt’s door. The number read 1901 in gold italics with an iron nail dotting each number. My mother knocked without looking down at me.

“Come in,” said a woman’s voice. It sounded more youthful than I anticipated—like cream or velvet.

My mother clenched my shoulder uncomfortably tight and spun me towards her. “You be polite and do what she says. We’re in the lobby, come down when you’re done.” She opened the door and shoved me through then turned and left.

“Come in, Peter, don’t be shy, let’s have a look at you.”

I stepped timidly at first. Her room was extravagant—fringed drapes, antique furniture, and velvet lamps that burned brightly in the small room. It smelled of sweet tobacco, like cavendish and honey.

“Hello, Aunt Cloe,” I said as politely as I could.

She wore a turquoise dress that collected across her chest and displayed an array of faded, but still beautiful tattoos that spread like a blossoming firework across her shoulders. They covered every inch of skin below her neck. I had never seen so many on one person before.

Her eyes lit up, a deep blue that outshone the dress and matching headband she wore. “You’re admiring my tattoos, I see.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh,” her face scrunched, “Don’t be so shy. Here, come sit with your Aunt Cloe. I’ll tell you about them.” She shot me a sideways smile and leaned closer. “Would you like to hear?”

“Yes,” I said, and sat across from her in front of an old wooden coffee table, the grain worn in the middle where tea cups rested without coasters.

“Would you like some candy?”

I nodded.

She leaned back around, displaying the tattoos on her back—a Virgin Mary, her arms clasped together with birds holding veils in their beaks at the top of each shoulder blade. When she turned back towards me she had a glass bowl in her hands filled with old candies.

She reached in and retrieved a piece between her tired old fingers, laying it on the table. She did that two more times until three candies laid on the coffee table in front of me.

“Go ahead,” she said, “Pick one.”

Two of them were pastel, pink and blue, and didn’t interest me. I selected the middle one, a brown piece in the shape of a barrel. Then I looked up at her. Her eyes began to well, and she smiled brightly, the wrinkles on her face recessing deep at the corners of her eyes, and continuing down to her cheeks like spreading spider webs.

“Go ahead,” she said. And I popped the candy in my mouth.

“Root be-” I began.

“Root Beer,” she finished, and wiped a tear that had collected just beneath her eye.

“When I was a little girl I didn’t get along with my parents or my brothers and sisters. We were a big family, and I didn’t care much for it.”

I nodded as I listened. I thought about my own family, and how I couldn’t disagree with the sentiment.

“So, when I was sixteen I ran away. We were living in Michigan then, and the circus had come to town. They had animals and trapeze and the women wore fabulous clothes with sparkling sequins. They twirled batons, and tamed lions, and I fell for them. I wanted that, I wanted it so badly. So I took what money I had saved and I left. Joining the circus at the time wasn’t so unheard of.”

Aunt Cloe took the blue piece of candy and popped it in her mouth, then laid back and looked to me, or rather, passed me and she continued to reminisce.

“It was less glamorous than I hoped. Most of my days with them were spent cleaning. First after the animals, then once they liked me, I was allowed to sell popcorn and cigarettes during the shows.”

She let the candy roll through her mouth, letting out a slight clicking noise as she squinted her eyes and thought back.

“There was a boy there. Duncan. He was dashing, and covered in twice the ink I have now. He was a bit older than me, a sailor. He was impressed.”

“Impressed?” I asked.

She smiled and her eyes beamed.

“It’s a sailing term. It’s when a merchant sailor is forced to become a soldier. It was hard to find capable sailors for warships, so they would capture innocent men and force them into the navy. Duncan was American, but captured by the British.”

“They did that? Kidnapped people?”

“Yes, child. It was illegal at the time, which is why they sent him way out west. After four years they trusted him enough to leave the ship, and that’s where he learned to tattoo. He visited shamans on the islands he visited, and he learned from them, adding to the tattoos he already had.”

"He already had tattoos?”

“Well, child, that’s how Duncan was special. He was born with them.”

The last of the root beer candy dissolved in my mouth and I swallowed deeply as I leaned in to listen.

“He said it was a curse from long ago, or a blessing, who can tell? That he was born many times, each time bringing with him the tattoos from before.”

She leaned back and waved her hands slowly across her chest.

“Over his heart was an auroch, an ancient bull, painted in harsh strokes, and above it the North Star.” Her hands moved to the top of her shoulder. “Up here was an orchid, beautiful, and beneath it the constellation Ares and a ram’s horn.” Her hands continued to her other shoulder. “Here lied Horus and beneath it the sun.”

She smiled at me again, the same youthful light in her eyes piercing through her aged appearance.

“You see, Duncan was touched. Every life he lived he got a tattoo and every life he lived thereafter he would add to his collection. By the time I had met him he was covered. After eight long years of fighting for the British he had finished his life’s tattoo and escaped. Built a raft and sailed all the way back to America. He landed in Oregon, and took a car back east. He told me it was his first car ride, and how he couldn’t stop asking questions about it, but too excited to listen.”

"And then he joined the circus, like you?” I asked.

“He did. He spent most of his days driving stakes for the tents, and at night he’d sit beneath an old gas lamp, and people would pay a penny to see his tattoos.

And you know, he never spent a dime on himself. He would take me out whenever he could. He’d buy me a milkshake and sometimes have a root beer, but always with me. He was gentle, and kind, and strong, and good.

He gave me my first tattoo after a month together.” Cloe leaned forward and pointed to a small orchid on her ankle. It was faded, intangible—like a melting snowflake on her fragile skin. “It was a gift he gave to me. He said he learned the magic from the shamans, and it would live on like his own.”

"What happened to him?” I asked, squirming eagerly in my chair.

“We were down south. Duncan was out with some of the other folk we traveled with and there was a commotion. Some townies had accused a young man of talking to his sister, and Duncan had intervened. Duncan walloped those boys good. Something he picked up with the Brits.

But later, as we were packing the show, they came back, a whole slew of them. Duncan pleaded with me, go inside, he begged, but I wouldn’t listen.

They came up to him with bats and chains, but he had his big stake hammer with him so they had to surround him, and one cracked him across the back of the head. I ran…” Cloe’s eyes began to water again, and she wiped the back of her hand across her lips.

"I ran to save him, to help him. I landed my fists as hard as I could against the man who struck him, but I caught the backhand of another that sent me clear into the dirt.

I watched them, dragging poor Duncan by a rope wrapped around his throat, down the dirt road. He clawed as hard as he could at the noose, but he couldn’t get his wits about him. I tried to save him, screaming, I tried, but those boys held me down.

As the dirt kicked up around him, his shirt torn from his back, he cried out to me. He said, ‘Don’t worry, Cloe. I’ll come back one day. Don’t cry. Don’t worry. I’ll come back for you. I will, I swear.’ Cloe’s eyes watered as she stared at me, her lips quivering, and then she calmed, collecting herself.

"They swung the rope over a tree branch and hung him. Right there. In front of god, me, and the rest of us. They killed him.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay, dear,” she said, composing herself. “It was so nice to finally meet you. Thank you for entertaining an old woman. I’m quite tired now—you can go back to the party.”

I didn’t want her story to end, I wanted to know more about Duncan. But she stood up, her tired old body shaking as she did, and she hugged me. And she cried, but not from sadness. She gave me a reassuring smile, her eyes still so blue, and I felt fulfilled—like I finally belonged somewhere, and my problems, my station in life, fell away.

I returned to the party that night, and my family was expertly drunk by the time I did. I was told it was getting late and to go with my older sister and little brother to bed, so we did.

Great-aunt Cloe died that night in her sleep. In the morning everyone talked about how lucky we were to be together for her passing; that it was a miracle she made it to ninety-nine at all.

I can’t help but suspect that she knew. She must have. In the following months an auroch, painted in harsh strokes, started to appear over my heart. Over the next few years others began appearing, slowly at first, and then vibrantly they kaleidoscoped across my body.

I’m still looking, no matter how long it takes. I’ll find her orchid again. I will, I swear.

See the whole anthology:

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[roryedd]

Out of the Blue

“I’m glad you made it,” shouted a man through a thick grey mustache, holding down his hat beneath the whirling blades of a helicopter.

His haircut was fresh, cut close to the skin, and he was dressed in military fatigues with a prominent black star embroidered above his left breast pocket—so I assumed he was probably a big deal. As I exiting the helicopter he reached out his hand and gave me a firm handshake. It was smoother than what I would have expected for a military man his years, and clammy. I could tell he was nervous.

“Please,” he said, directing me with an open palm, “We have it contained in a sealed facility just behind me.”

The facility was large, its bare metal glistening beneath the floodlights against the night sky. It was haphazardly constructed, a large dome surrounded by snaking outcroppings leading to barracks and what must have been hastily erected research stations.

“What is it?” I asked, now hurrying through a long corridor, matching the soldier’s pace.

“You’re here to tell us that.”

The corridor was long and brightly lit, with white tile flooring, makeshift steel walls, and overhead lights. The entire facility had been hurriedly constructed over the thing, caging it in. It was too dangerous to relocate.

“What agency did you say you worked for?” He asked.

“I’m from the Atypical Threat Reduction Agency.”

“I ain’t heard of that,” he said, his pace increasing to a march.

“Well, it’s new.” I said, struggling to keep up.

“Who’s in charge there?”

“Since it was created this morning, and because I’m the only person in it—I guess that would be me.”

“I’ll be honest—we didn’t know who to expect, sir. Once the president disappeared and the rest of the cabinet resigned, we didn’t know who they would send. We didn’t know who’d be crazy enough to want to come.”

“Yeah, well,” I said. “Sometimes it’s not the decision makers who rise to face the unknown, but the those who ask questions.”

“So you volunteered?”

“It came down the chain, and I was the first person it came to without the authority to pawn it off on someone else. I think most people would rather be home right now with their families. There was also a major concern it may be telepathic.”

“Ah, so it can’t learn any classified intel?”

“I was the only one not cheating on his wife. They thought a clean conscience might be the best representation for all of humanity.”

He looked back for just a moment with a wry smile, “She must be a lucky gal.”

“I’m not married,” I said.

We continued down the long hall, its walls shining in the light, and the recently placed, immaculate white tiles of the floor cascading down the hall. Finally, we arrived at a large steel hatch with a wheel lock. The soldier turned to face me as he bent over to turn the wheel.

“The room is pressurized, so if something goes wrong, we can’t get you out.”

“So what should I do?”

“Don’t piss it off.”

The door wheezed and a gust of moist air shot from the seams of the hatch. The soldier stepped in first. The room was brightly illuminated, with a large glass window from the floor to ceiling that looked into total darkness. At the center of the room was a small desk, the kind a high school teacher would have used in a school suffering from budget shortages, a single steel rolling chair with faded green cloth, and on the floor beside them was an old beat-up CRT television with a frayed cord spiraling out from behind it.

The soldier’s pace increased to just short of a run. He leaned over and lifted up the heavy television set and dropped it onto the table, rattling the ancient electronics within. “It talks through this,” he said, gesturing to the old television. “You’ve got an hour. Good luck.”

The soldier made his way to the door as fast as he could.

“Aren’t you going to plug it in?” I asked.

The hatch slammed shut.

The lights went out and the sounds of whirring mechanism churned as the room began pressurizing. Adjusting my eyes in the black, I could see a glow in the darkness beyond the glass, like the beam of a lighthouse suffocated by fog.

As the clicking hum of electricity filled the incandescent lights of the room they flickered back on. I slowly approached the glass sheet that made up an entire wall of the large room and stood perfectly still. I couldn’t make anything out through the window. The light in the room was too bright, and all I could see was my own reflection in the still black glass.

“Hello,” I said, facing my own reflection. I didn’t have anything planned, and it seemed like a perfectly adequate introduction. My instructions were more than simple, find out what it wants. The unspoken addition to that, I assume, was to find out how to kill it.

I stood there, and waited for a reply. A minute went by, then five, then ten. I didn’t want to pressure it into speaking with me if it didn’t want to. I had done my job and it didn’t work—if it didn’t want to talk I could go.

Keeping my eyes fixed on my own reflection I backpedaled to the chair and unfixing the bottom button of my jacket I took a seat. Then the familiar whine of an old television set turning on shook me, and I looked over to the television set—now hissing static.

HELLO.

The letters were broken, unfixed on the screen the word shook up and down, and occasionally split through the middle. The letters came in clear, white on black, and bled out on the sides in hues of red, green, and blue.

I shot my attention back to the glass. But it was still just me, sitting in a chair beside a desk. A perfect reflection against the perfect dark.

Looking back at the television set, I bent down and looked beneath the table. And there, still dangling freely, was the power cord.

I sat back and composed myself as best I could. The word “hello” still flashed on the screen beside me, taunting me and driving me towards a loss for words. In this moment the enormity of my purpose here came into full focus.

“Where do you come from?” I asked as clearly as I could into my own reflection.

I looked into the screen and watched the same dancing letters still spelling “hello.” Turning again to the glass it was still, like a pool of black water casting a shadowy reflection.

The words disappeared from the screen, and were replaced.

DISTANT.

It wasn’t excitement, or anxiety, but an entirely new feeling washing over me. I was a child again, asking my father every question I could manage. What we could learn from this being, what it could answer.

I AM HERE.

“What does that mean? I didn’t ask that.”

I AM HERE.

The words repeated. Flashing.

“Yes, you are. You are here. We have you here, and we need you to answer a few more questions. Then, maybe we will release you.”

The screen went blank.

“Why did you destroy this town? Why did you kill all of the people here?” I tried to ask the words as politely as I could.

I AM HERE.

“Why are you here?” I asked, shooting forward.

TO PROTECT.

“You’re here to protect the Earth?”

YES.

“Then why? Why kill all those people?” I caught myself after I asked the question, and quickly eased my tone. Looking back to the glass I asked calmly, “What do you want?”

TO PROTECT.

“Yes. Protect the Earth. What is it about the Earth you want to protect?”

ANIMALS PLANTS BACTERIA.

The text faded from the screen. The answers came quickly now, the creature sending its responses at a frenetic pace.

ALL ONE CHEMICAL REACTION.

ALL THE SAME.

Looking towards the wall of glass I tried as best as I could to see the thing. If I could see it, maybe I could better understand it. But, like an echo not returned, there was nothing.

“Yes, all life on Earth is related. We’re all a product of evolution.”

NOT HUMANS. HUMANS ARE REACTION.

“A reaction to what?”

METEORS

“Meteors? Like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs? Friends of yours?”

HUMANS ARE IMMUNE SYSTEM. PROTECT FROM METEORS.

“Are you warning us of a meteor that’s coming? Are humans in danger.”

NO METEOR. HUMANS IN DANGER.

“So if there’s no meteor, then how are humans in danger?”

NEW IMMUNE SYSTEM.

“A new immune system?” I said facetiously, getting frustrated at the glow of the old television and its incessant static hiss. “For the Earth? Created by all life to protect itself? Right?”

I AM HERE.

“Yes, I know you’re here. What do you want? Why have you attacked people?”

YOU ARE BORN WITH YOUR FACE TO THE STARS. YOUR BACK TO THE EARTH.

“So we’re an immune system, then,” I said shrugging. “From the brine shrimp in thermal vents under the Arctic to the bacteria in my toilet, we’re here to protect them from meteors? We were born to watch for threats from the stars?”

YES.

“And then what were you born facing?”

HUMANS.

I stood up. Tired of reading the flashing lines of text. “How is that possible? Where are you from?” I was scared. More scared than I’d ever been before.

DISTANT RELATIVE. DEEP BELOW.

“And how do you know how to communicate with me? How are you doing this?”

IMMUNE SYSTEM DESIGNED TO DEFEAT THE THREAT.

“And what will you do—with you in there? How will you defeat this threat?” Fear gave way to anger. “What can you do now, you’re trapped. We have defeated you! Now how did you stay undetected? How did you shut down our power? Why did you kill all those people?”

I AM HERE.

“I know you’re there. And you’re going to stay there. And you’re going to rot there. So you need to start giving me answers!” I yelled, approaching the glass.

The crack of guns discharging, muffled by the thick walls of the facility, rang out from behind me. I turned my head up to look as the overhead lights shut off, leaving me in complete darkness—bar for the glow of the old television. The wavering text of the screen still shaking in the static, “I am here.”

Looking back to the glass, my reflection was gone—replaced by a creature standing face to face with me. It was tall, much taller than me, and covered in bony plates that overlapped like layers of pitch-black armor. Like a giant isopod from a nightmare, it had chittering mandibles and reflective black orbs for eyes that stared right through me. Crackling electricity seemed to run beneath its skin, and it lit up like a paper lantern. Black mist poured out of the sides of what must be its head, filling the small space with a thick fog, reflecting its light like a roiling thunderstorm.

I looked back to the television. The message, “I am here,” remained.

Then there was a deafening bang on the hatch that echoed around me.

I AM HERE.

Then another.

I AM HERE.

A shriek of air as it escaped through the hatch behind me forced me backwards into the glass. Then another crash landed against the hatch, bending it inwards.

I AM HERE. It repeated.

I AM HERE.

I AM HERE.

Then they were.

See the whole anthology:

https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Science-Fiction-Anthology-Future-ebook/dp/B0744GHMRY

[roryedd]

An Uncertain Sanctuary

Black, rotten corn slumped in their cradles, and I knew the harvest was lost. There were rows of it—blighted, sick, dead.

“Peter!” It was my good-for-nothing brother’s job to clear the blighted stalks before they spread to the others. Not that it mattered, the few that did take root already had it, and the ones that didn’t soon would. It had already spread from the boroughs to the cities. Food was scarce, and while the sickness grew stronger, we grew weaker.

“Peter,” I called out again. Nothing.

I peered out from the end of the stalks at the edge of our farm. We were on the outskirts, one of the last places still holding against the blight, feeding the starving, and if we could manage, have enough left for ourselves. Beyond our farm was the reach, a barren field we kept unplanted, it created a buffer between us and a thin copse of trees that grew along our side of the barrier.

Careful with my footing to keep from sinking into the mud that permeated the reach, I noticed other footprints pressed deep into the soft earth that pooled with still water. Smaller and wider than my own I knew they were Peter’s. They headed towards the barrier where it joined a second set and then disappeared into the treeline. The second set was large, much larger than even Pa’s, and much deeper than Peter’s.

When we were little Peter and I would dare each other to run out to the trees and touch the barrier, but neither of us ever had the courage. I was scared of it, even though I thought it was beautiful when it shimmered across the sky sometimes. It was translucent, and let in sunlight, but nothing else. The barrier kept us safe from the blasted earth and poisoned air. We were warned about the savages who used to stalk outside, but they were long dead—killed off by the war that ravaged the world as we erected it.

“Peter, this isn’t funny.” I tied my hair back and took a step into the muddy field. I paused there. The fear shook me. I had been warned all my life that the barrier is dangerous, and what lay beyond it even more so. The fear was overwhelming, and I looked back towards the corn stalks, orienting myself towards our home. Peter was in trouble, and I had to get help.

Our farmhouse was a manor, a reproduction, and in a pretty sorry state. The white paint peeled and chipped at the edges and it listed on its tired foundation. It was built during a period where reclaiming and celebrating our heritage was mandatory, so buildings were made resembling the American South. We were told it was in the American federalist style, but it was definitely French colonial, not that anyone really cared, or even remembered the difference anymore.

Letting the screen door slam behind me with a shattering clack, I rushed into the parlor to find Ma. She was there, sitting on an antique couch draped in a quilt by a lacquered coffee table. She was looking down at a letter in her hand, her eyes serious, her other hand over her mouth. “Ma!” I screamed, “I can’t find Peter!”

Ma didn’t respond. She only stared at the letter, exquisitely absorbed by it. Dropping her hand to her knees, the letter still folded open by her thumb, she glanced up at me.

“I’m sorry, Olive.” Her words came soft and weak—so full of remorse, “I know you wanted it so badly.”

“What is it, Ma? What’s it say?” I said apprehensively.

“It’s from City Central. They’ve gone through your medical results, and you don’t qualify for reproduction. You have to schedule a mandatory appointment with the clinic by tomorrow. I’m so sorry.”

I broke down. Not into a slobbering mess, but instead it was like my mind shut off. I could feel it, a black hole expanding just under my belly. A vacant hole, tugging on the rest of me like hammered piano strings. It was decided then—I was unfit, less than perfect. I would be given a hysterectomy because people somewhere decided that they had the right to subtract from me.

Without looking up from the floor, I said the only thing I could manage. “Peter’s gone to the barrier...”

“You too know better than to go out there. It’s not safe,” said Ma, rising from the couch. “Get Pa, he’s outside.”

I turned to leave, and then looked back, and watched my mother wander to the kitchen and drop the letter into the bin. It gave me a spark of hope. Maybe I could convince them I was adequate, maybe she would help make my case. Maybe I would stay whole.

Pa was working on the tractor by the corn silo. Not that we needed either with our poor harvests. He was tall, weary, but strong. The sleeves of his red work shirt were rolled up past his elbows, and his hands were dyed black with grease.

“Peter’s lost at the barrier,” I said.

He turned from his work and bent down to face me. He had black eyes, so much darker than my mother’s blue. I wondered whose genetics had caused me to be unfit, whose gift to me was inadequacy.  “Show me where,” he said.

Pa hitched a small cart to the tractor, and I rode in the back watching the corn stalks, once a vibrant gold when I was little—now grey. They hung wearily, too weak to bear even their own small, stunted fruit.

The tractor hummed as it idled, and Pa hopped down into the muck. He turned to me for just a moment, “Wait here, Olive. I’ll go look.” He let the words drawl out from the side of his mouth, Pa was never much of a talker.

He didn’t step out into the reach immediately. Instead he gazed out and panned the treeline on the other side. I don’t know what he was looking for. Peter’s tracks were clear as day crossing through the mud, as were the larger ones beside them. I think Pa was scared too. Not as much as me. But even in his day he was raised just like us, to fear what lay beyond the barrier.

Rolling up his sleeves he began slogging through the thick mud. Each step took a burden on him and he slowed as the mud collected on his boots. Every few steps he turned his head, looking out for Peter. Or maybe for something else, some unseen threat that had infiltrated our land.

As he disappeared into the trees I leaned back in the small, wooden trailer. It, like our farm, was old and decaying. Cracked wooden boards and half-flat tires. I looked up to the sky and could see the slight shimmer of the barrier. Iridescent rays of light refracted through it like a rainbow flickering across an oil spill. The council called it the good fence, and said it made us safer, made us better, but I only felt it made us trapped. It made us prisoners.

A howl rang out from across the reach. Shooting up I glanced over and saw it was Pa. He was shouting and waving, but I couldn’t hear him over the rumbling of the tractor. I leaned forward, my palms on the back of the tractor seat, and I could see his face. He was afraid. More than I’d ever seen him. It was a face I had seldom seen fear in.

Taking long strides he hopped up to the seat, flinging mud as he swung his leg over, and I fell back to the cart. Slamming the tractor into drive he pulled forward, and swung wide, taking out a mass of cornstalks, not bothering to avoid destroying something so precious. We sped off as fast as the old tractor could take us, sending me jostling around in the small cart—its worn out wheels only sometimes gaining traction, and other times sliding in the mud.

“Olive!” shouted Pa over his shoulder, “I need you to fetch Ma, and help her into the cart. You need to hurry, we don’t have time.”

“What about Peter?” I cried.

“Once you’re both safe I’ll get help and we’ll get Peter.”

Pulling up to the farmhouse I did as he told me, and Ma, confused and flustered, climbed into the cart. Pa didn’t say a word, and we drove down the dirt road that bordered the farmlands. We passed by the Johnson farmland, their corrupted orchards producing pale misshapen oranges, and soft black apples. Then the Brown’s, with their dead cabbage and potatoes the size of dried out raisins. It was like that, each one worse than the last, for miles.

Ma laid her hand on my shoulder and leaned up to Pa. “What is it, what’s going on, Jim? Where are we going? Where’s Peter?”

Pa glanced back, sweat dotting his forehead and he let the words shoot from the side of his mouth. “They have him. It’s finally happened. They’ve breached the barrier.”

Ma didn’t ask any more questions. She sat quietly, looking down, almost defeated. Her joy, if she could ever be called joyful, was absent. I was scared too. I felt a pit well in my stomach thinking of Peter, and having left him, but I didn’t have the courage to speak up.

The dirt road was replaced by pavement, and as dusk crept in we reached an enormous throng of people. We had reached the longhouse. It was a large white structure where local council met. They took their orders from City Central. Outside of it were hundreds of people, some lined up outside, many in a disordered mass, and most yelling frantically. The face I saw on Pa was plastered on their own. It was boiled over concern, or fear maybe, or just the ache of uncertainty when you are deprived of answers.

Pa stopped short of the crowd and pulled the tractor and cart over to the side of the road. “Come with me,” said Pa, holding my hand fast as I exited the cart, “And stay close.”

We navigated through the crowd, dried mud sloughing off Pa’s boots as he marched. They were angry, and they were starving. Gaunt faces and tattered clothes, they looked like they had worked themselves nearly to death just to continue surviving. They were in a panic, many yelling that people were missing. That the barrier had been breached. That we have to do something. Nobody knew what. The council was all we had to look to for hope.

Pa forced us through the crowd and stopped at the large oak doors of the longhouse. There were armed guard lined up just outside. Each wore black fatigues with bulletproof vests, and looked more like soldiers than security. Their rifles were slung over their backs, and they had their hands raised, trying to ease the furious throng of people. But it was in vain as the rowdy crowd spat and shoved on them.

Two of the guards, well armed with their rifles at the ready, closed in on Pa, blocking our way into the longhouse.

Pa stood straight, his hand tightening on mine, and lowered his eyes to theirs. “I’ve got the only farm left in town.” His voice was cold, flat. “You want to eat anything besides rotten sludge, you let us through.” It was mostly true. We barely had enough food to feed ourselves.

The guards looked to each other and separated just enough for the three of us.

Pushing past them Pa lead us into the longhouse. I was hit by a wall of heat from the packed crowd, and the bitter smell of sweat and fear. I was shoved back and forth by shoulders and elbows, propelled through the crowd by my father’s sturdy grasp.

Bodies obscured my view, but I could look up as I was jostled through the sea of people. The longhouse was built during the revision, a time when the founders tried to recapture what made us better than others. It had sweeping arches held aloft by white pillars, and displayed great murals of leaders and heroes. Usually they were one in the same. When the great war broke out these men built the barrier, and during the revision that followed they lead the rebuilding of our communities.

“Blackport,” shouted father, bringing us to a halt near the front of the longhouse. There was an elevated stage, and on it at a podium was the head of our community, a tall blond man. He was older than my father, with wrinkles that cracked at the corners of his eyes, and jowls that pulled his lips down into a grimace.

My father fired out his name again, and this time Blackport took notice.

“My son, Peter, he’s gone!” Pa cried, his voice shaking him, “The barrier is breached! They took my son!”

“Please, please!” said Blackport towards the audience, augmented by a microphone in his collar. “There is no cause for alarm. The barrier cannot be breached. There is no danger. There is nothing outside—no human being could have survived the war.” He raised his hand reassuringly. “We are safe.”

The crowd of furious people swelled in anger.

“I saw them!” came a shout from the crowd. A man, one of the farmers from the other side of the borough pushed forward. He was rail-thin, with grey skin and dark circle beneath each eye as if the blight had affected him as well. “Enormous things, armed with weapons I’ve never seen before! It’s an invasion! They took my brother, and now they’re coming for us!”

Before he could continue two of the black-clad guards emerged from the crowd and dragged him off, kicking and screaming as he went.

“People, please! There is no cause for alarm—”

Before Blackport could finish, a crackling of furious gunfire erupted from outside. It was like every available gun had gone off, and then ended abruptly. The crowd was silent for the first time. The piercing quiet was so much worse. We all braced ourselves, unsure of what to expect next.

A booming echo of heavy wooden doors slamming shut washed over us, and a lone guard began barring the entrance. Pulling up a pew, its wooden feet screeching on the stone floor, he propped it up against heavy, wooden doors. “For the love of god, help me!” He begged, his voice cracked and shaking.

People, as if awoken from a daze, began to nervously chatter among themselves. A few men went to help the guard, and they began barricading the door. Their weak, starved frames struggling under the weight of the wooden benches.

Pa’s grip tightened on mine.

“What about the people outside?” said Pa to the man at the podium.

“We’re going to wait this out. You’re safe in here,” said Blackport, and he retreated towards the other council members standing behind him on the stage.

My father was still. He was glaring at the councilmen, but didn’t move. My mother held fast to his arm, looking around for some semblance of order. Something she could latch onto to make sense of the ordeal.

The attack started slowly. First the whirring hum and beating wind of some strange craft descended from above us. Then the cold blue light poured in through the longhouse windows, overtaking the interior lights. We were surrounded. Then a crash against the door sent one of the pews tumbling to the floor. Then again. Then again.

The doors cracked open, and the same blue light washed over us in thick, penetrating beams.

People parted and I heard my mother scream—it wasn’t in fear, but in shock. Peter stood in the doorway. His small, thin frame appeared unharmed, and it was haloed in the blue glow.

Peter walked down the center of the longhouse through the parting crowd. Coming towards us he spoke softly, but with a joy I had never seen. “They’re here to help!”

“It’s a trick!” shouted Blackport. “He’s a spy, he’s out to ruin us!”

Blackport signaled to the guards and they rushed in from the sides of the stage.

Before I felt his grip leave my own Pa had gotten between them and leveled one of the guards with a solid left to the jaw. The other guard landed a thunderous blow to Pa, cracking him over the head with the butt of his rifle.

“Please, stop!” said Peter, “They don’t want to hurt us. They’ve been watching us, and they know we need help. They’ve come to save us.”

“Lies!” screamed Blackport. He pulled a revolver from his jacket and aimed it at Peter.

It happened so fast that I heard the shot after I felt the bullet tear into my stomach. I collapsed in front of Peter where I had rushed over to protect him.

“No matter, she was unfit anyway. Just like her father. I should never have agreed to let you reproduce, Jim.” Blackport gestured his gun towards Pa as he laid unconscious on the floor. “There will be no more placating to the inferior just because they’re farmers, from now on I have total control. We have faced greater odds and come out victorious, we will weather this.”

The red stain soaked into my clothes and began spreading up to my chest. I slumped down onto my knees and cradled my belly.

“It’s okay,” said Peter softly into my ear, “They’re here.”

Looking behind me, my vision not quite clear, I could see them emerge from the light. First just one, then another, then dozens. They laid their hands on the people and they seemed to evaporate into the light.

Each one was tall, wearing armor that reflected the same blue light. The first one who entered walked up to Blackport, and before he could say a word, he disappeared. Quickly fading into the light.

Peter kneeled beside me and laid his hand on my stomach. “I told you. They’re here to help.”

One of the invaders, this one slimmer than the others kneeled down beside Peter, and looked down at me. Removing its helmet I saw her face. A woman, with caramel skin and dark eyes. She smiled, and retrieved a device from her belt.

The device cast the same blue light, and I could feel the pain go away as my body faded into the light.

“We’ve watched you, Olive,” she said sweetly, her form bathed in blue light . Her words, spoken with the overabundance of love only a new mother could express, penetrated through me.

“Why me,” I said. “I’m defective.”

“Your people, like your walled city, has reached its end. They hid from the wars they started, and abandoned us. Slowly, we recovered, and shared, and learned. While they stagnated we continued evolving. We were going to let your people suffer their own devices, seeing your culture as anathema to ours. But we will not return the same animus—we will not abandon you. Not when you are proof there is goodness here.”

“Am I not defective?”

“No. No one is. No one can be,” she said. “Come with us. You will be perfect as you are, and you will stay whole.”

I looked into her eyes. Each iris was a deep, reflective black. Just like Pa’s. Just like mine. Deep black pools that revealed all truth.

I let the light take me in its gentle caress. The four of us, as a family, reunited in the light, went to where we could be whole together.

See the whole anthology:

https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Science-Fiction-Anthology-Future-ebook/dp/B0744GHMRY

[roryedd]

The Greatest Science Fiction Anthology of All Time, and I Would Know, I'm From the Future.

Available on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Science-Fiction-Anthology-Future-ebook/dp/B0744GHMRY

[roryedd]

The Greatest Science Fiction Anthology of All Time, and I Would Know, I'm from the Future

Before we begin, let me warn you: space and time are but an illusion, a collidiscoping trick of the light played on you by your mind’s inability to grasp the higher dimensions that tumble and cascade through the aether. Within these pages I offer you the ability to reach out and touch the threads that make up our myriad reality, taste the awe-inspiring knowledge of infinite possibility, and drink from the wellspring of your own unbound consciousness. This is the greatest science fiction anthology of all time, and you must trust me, dear reader, for I am truly from the future.

[roryedd]

Previous work

http://www.thoughtlab.com - design/copy

http://imgur.com/gallery/jDlpp - design/copy

http://www.safetyandsecurityleadershipconference.com/home/ - design/copy

http://www.theminerfoundation.com - design/copy/development

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSE6DDT-KFg - some design/copy

http://www.foxhoundpress.com - design/development/copy

[roryedd]

There's a pasture, and in that pasture is a cave, and in that cave is a pool, and in that pool lives the Tommyrot

I was depressed. Eleven year olds shouldn’t be depressed. When you’re a kid, and you have no control, it’s so much worse. I wasn’t just depressed. I was powerless.

My mother had told me that I’d be placed in a resource class for half the school day from then on. It wasn’t long before the kids started calling me retarded, and I started to believe it.

The school had deemed me slow, and my mother had agreed.

I was eleven, powerless, depressed, and now retarded.

The only friend I had left was named Bo. His family was poor, and his clothes were always stained and tattered, and his hair a disheveled blond mess. When school got out we ended up spending almost the entire summer together.

We mostly played in the wooded pasture at the end of our street. It was a large farmland, separated by barbed wire, and at the center was a rocky outcropping flanked by a thick grove of twisted trees.

Much of the pasture was overgrown, and crisscrossed with pine trees — the foliage being thickest near the barbed wire. We discovered a hidden clearing beneath some small trees, and we dug out a shallow trench beneath the barbed wire so we could wriggle into the pasture. The farmer left the dead cows to decompose in the sun, so we spent the first half of the summer sneaking through and collecting cow bones. I used a sun-bleached pelvis as a mask, and we would wield the femurs like clubs as we chased each other through the dandelions on the pop-marked field carved from the hooves of cows in the muddy earth.

Sometimes the farm hand would show up and wave at us from his tractor, and we’d wave back. Thinking back he must have known we’d been sneaking in, but we tried never to go in when any adults were around. One day he walked over to us as we played of the other side of the barbed wire.

“Can you guys help me with something?” He asked us.

“Yeah,” we replied.

“I near ran over this poor fella, if you guys don’t mind, you can take care of him for me.” And he handed us a box turtle.

We were inspecting it excitedly, neither of us had held a turtle before. Then, as he began to leave, as if he remembered something suddenly, he turned to us and his gaze lowered. Then in the most flat, deadly serious voice I had ever heard, “Don’t go near the rocks,” he said, “That’s where the Tommyrot lives.” I shouted, “What is the Tommyrot?” But he had already gone.

My mom said I couldn’t keep the turtle, so Bo and I decided to keep it in our fort inside of a box. We named him Ed. Ed never came out of his shell around us, but he would eat the lettuce we left him, so we knew he came out when we were gone.

One day we spent the afternoon at my house and caught a lizard — a green anole, the kind that change from green to brown to blend in. We named him Eggbert, and were excited to add him to the box with Ed.

When we arrived at the fort we saw four teenagers hanging around, two guys and two girls, and we panicked that they had found Ed and would steal him. When we approached we noticed the kids were smoking, which we knew was a bad thing. They hadn’t noticed our fort at all, definitely due to excellent engineering on our part to keep it secret.

“What do you kids want?” said the biggest guy, dark circles under his eyes partially obscured by greasy black hair, the cigarette smoke leaking out from is mouth as he spoke.

“We were going into the field,” said Bo.

“Nah, you little kids don’t want to do that, the Tommyrot will get you.”

“Who is the Tommyrot,” I demanded.

The teenagers began laughing, the greasy haired one started a hacking cough as he snickered. “Don’t you know? There’s a cave in the center of the farm, and a pool of water at the bottom. The Tommyrot has long, spindly arms that end in sharp black claws, and skin that sloughs off like the film on curdled milk. He’ll grab you and drown you in that pool, then he’ll devour you whole.” He punctuated the last word by pantomiming a jaw snapping motion with his hands.

“Is he real?” asked Bo.

The teenagers began laughing again. “Of course not, kid, the old farmer made that shit up forever ago to keep kids out.”

Bo and I looked at each other and laughed, maybe out of relief, but I think we were trying to look cool in front of the older kids, as if we had always known it wasn’t real.

The greasy hair kid flicked his cigarette to the ground and they walked off. We returned to Ed’s box in our fort and found him there, his lettuce partially eaten, and him still stubbornly in his shell. We added Eggbert to the box, and watched him scurry around, confused, and processing his confinement by tilting his head.

We returned to my house and got approval for a sleepover, so we stayed up late watching cartoons. Back then we watched Nickelodeon, and Are You Afraid of the Dark came on and we held the blanket up over our heads during the scary parts. Once it was over Nick at Night started, and we both audibly gagged at the prospect of watching I Love Lucy and Gilligan’s Island.

Bo suggested we go check on Eggbert, and see if he had convinced Ed to come out of his shell. We weren’t supposed to leave after dark, but I agreed and we grabbed a couple flashlights and snuck out.

When we got to the box Ed was gone, and at the bottom was Eggbert, disemboweled. It looked like Ed had taken a bite out of him, then burrowed under the box flap and disappeared. “We have to go find him,” pleaded Bo.

So, we took turns lifting the barbed wire and crawling through, then began our search along the ground for our fugitive turtle, now wanted murderer. Our flashlights illuminated just a small bit of ground, and the uneven, muddy field became a challenge.

We had gone further in than we realized, the hot night air making us sticky, and sweaty. Bo called out to me to turn back, but when I looked up to find him he was gone, and there was a large black shape instead. Its arms, long and twisted, reached out at me and I screamed. “The Tommyrot!” I cried, praying for a response from Bo and receiving nothing.

I began running. The uneven ground was impossible to run on and I stumbled then crawled, dropping my flashlight, and I could hear the creature behind me grunting as it pursued me. I lifted myself up and made it towards the rocks in the center of the field. There was a light on, a solid beam wavering in the humid air emanating from the mouth of a cave.

I ran in, my chest rising and falling heavily as I tried to catch my breath. It was Bo, and he was looking at a pool of water, the light of his flashlight filling the small space. “The Tommyrot, the Tommyrot!” I screamed, grabbing at his shoulder. But he didn’t look back. He just stared into the still water.

I could hear it enter the cave, the scraping noise of something heavy sliding on loose dirt. I looked at it, holding tightly onto Bo’s arm, but it wasn’t the Tommyrot. It was an old man, his brow thick with sweat, and his knees caked with mud.

“You kids aren’t supposed to—“ his eyes widened, “Mother Mary and Joseph…”

I followed his gaze, and he stared at what Bo had seen. There, in the pool, was a pale, bloated little body. Floating still in the small bit of water. A teenage girl, her black hair spiraling out like spider legs.

The cave had a narrow underwater passage, and on the other side was a small chamber where local youth would hang out. Inside was an old rope, slick with algae, connecting the two sides, and they believe that on the way back through the pool the girl in the front had panicked and tried to turn around, trapping the four kids. She drowned first, and then the rest. Only she made it to the pool, her swollen body rising to the surface, face down.

It took them four days to drain all the water from the narrow passage in the cave with heavy electric pumps. People worried that some may have made it back to the other side and become trapped, and forced to claw their way through the submerged, bloated bodies and drowned much later. The farmer sealed the cave entrance soon after with loose rocks and concrete.

I told my mother that I didn’t want to go back to school. She let me switch schools, and I attended a private academy that had animal rehabilitation for at risk kids, and I was able to expunge my record of resource classes. I never saw Bo again. I still believe that there's a pasture, and in that pasture is a cave, and in that cave is a pool, and in that pool lives the Tommyrot.

[roryedd]

my scifi series.

[roryedd]

[roryedd]

Dark Place, Dark Place, Dark Place

[roryedd]

[roryedd]

The Catechism: Part 1

The stone hall was unusually damp--a hundred nervous bodies all stirred restlessly under the wavering torchlight for their chance to prove themselves, or never return. I tried not to think about the danger, and focused only on how to overcome the challenge that lied ahead.

  At the end of the great hall was an enormous black lacquer table flanked by the head teachers, the master archivists, their black robes emblazoned with the red heraldry of their shared house. Most of the students bore the same mark on their plain brown tunics. I wore the sigil of my own family’s house--a silver unicorn, abated with a black slash through it, a punishment for an injustice generations ago.

  The senior master archivist, an ugly man with a long pointed goatee, took a step forward, peering down at us, and in a grave voice he bellowed, “Apprentices! The time has come for you to prove yourselves in the Catechism!” His black eyes darted from student to student, singling out those who might still had a glimmer of hope and extinguishing it.

  He folded his arms behind his back and began pacing. “On this table is an array of equipment, both magical and mundane. You may select only four to help you on your journey in addition to your most basic survival gear. Once you have selected you will be teleported to the furthest reaches of our world, where you must survive, unaided, until your worth is proven.”

  He paced across the platform that sat a step above us, and raised a hand through a long sleeve and the students quieted to a hush. “Be warned,” he paused, surveying us once again, “The wilds are dangerous, and the climates extreme. Choose wisely.”

  The apprentices were lined up by age, the fifteen year olds were at the front, and me being in my thirteenth year, was among the last third. The boys never took long, many families continued their long traditions and selecting the tools of their fathers. A boy would snatch up a flaming sword, and the children would cheer, then a cloak of stealth, and they would clap and holler, and then a bow of endless arrows, and more cheering. They chose weapons for war, not for survival, as if they meant to threaten the wild into accommodating them.

  Then, one by one, they were given a magical pendant with a red gem in the center, and stepped through a mirrored portal. As each boy stepped through it glowed brightly then diminish and they disappeared into the unknown.

  At last it was my turn, and the cheering had chilled. I had no family among the archivists or apprentices, no one shared my sigil, and I had no family tradition to uphold. My father was deemed unfit for the Catechism, and his brothers had both perished during their attempts. I would be the first to survive it in a hundred years, if I did survive it at all.

  “Alright, Asher, what do you choose?” said the snide archivist.

  There were at least a hundred items to choose from, each one magically replaced after being selected. A weapon, I thought, and I looked over to an array of swords, spears, and daggers. All metal, I thought. What if my destination was too hot for metal, or too wet. I moved on, spying a simple wooden hatchet made from the ironwood trees, enchanted to keep an edge as sharp as obsidian. I snatched it up, and could hear chuckled behind me. The other students whispered among themselves that I had made a poor choice, that it was so small, but I ignored them.

  I would need fire, and I looked over the enchanted lanterns and torches. Beside them, in a small red leather pouch, was a collection of firestones. They could be tossed to the ground to start a fire or crushed up into cinders and could last for months, but most importantly, I wouldn’t be limited to a single source of fire. I lifted the small pouch from the table, and tied it to my belt. My selection was met with more uncertain whispers.

  For the next item I hesitated. I would need something that would help me get around, and overcome any uneven terrain I might meet.

  “Hurry up, boy. Choose,” rattled the archivist.

  There were boots of levitation, a cloak that would slow descent from falls, a tent that would always stay a cool seventy-five degrees, and bracers that allowed its bearer to grip to solid rock. I chose a rope, magically capable of extending to a hundred times its length at my whim, and slung it over my arm. This time even the archivists joined in and looked to one another and smirked at my decision.

  For my fourth, and final, selection I chose a simple potion of healing. A drop could repair a cut or scrape, a teaspoon could repair a broken leg, and the entire bottle could save its user from certain death. This choice brought on a roaring laughter from the students behind me.

  I turned to the archivist and nodded. He spun me around and faced me towards the portal, its still, mirrored surface casting a perfect reflection of me. I looked scared.

  “Wear this at all times. When the gem glows red, press on it, and you will return to this room where we will be waiting,” said the archivist, pinning the pendant to my tunic. “Make your house proud!” And he shoved me. As I fell endlessly through the mirror, overtaken by a bright light, I swore I could hear them laughing.

  I awoke to a vast sea of blue. An ocean, I thought frantically. I clenched my fists, bringing up handfuls of green grass. I rubbed the grass on my face, taking a deep breath of the sweet freshly cut aroma that only grass possessed. It was the sky--I had landed on my back.

  I rose, gaining my bearings and surveyed my surroundings. There were trees, but it was hardly a forest, and much of the ground gave way to stoney patches that lead up to rolling peaks in the distance. First thing, I thought to myself, is to find water.

  I came upon a stream not too far from where I began. It was still early in the day, so I was glad to have been so fortunate. I laid out my pack there on the bank and made an inventory. A bedroll, a dog tent, about a hundred feet of rope--plus another thousand of magical rope, I sighed--flint and steel, a canteen, a blanket, a metal bowl, a knife, about a weeks worth of dried rations, my thirteen thunderstones, a potion of healing, and a magical wooden hatchet. I shook my head, this was going to be difficult.

  I ventured to a grove of trees and recovered a disused bird’s nest, and crumpled it into a small pile near the bank beneath a large tree. Using my flint and steel I started to make a fire, or tried to make a fire. Flint and steel proved more difficult to use than I thought. I furiously shaved the flint off the stick, letting it mix with the fine tinder made from the bird’s nest, then struck the stick as hard as I could, shooting out sparks like a violent firework. The flint would burn up quickly, creating a sizzling sound, but the tinder refused to light.

  After a couple hours I gave up and spent one of my thunderstones, striking it hard in my palm and letting it fall into the tinder. The fire burst to life, and I fed the hungry flames wood I had collected, but I was concerned to see my thunderstones being used so soon into my test. It wouldn’t be the first omen that I would fail.

  In the waning light of the sun I laid out my bedroll, and covered it with the dog tent. It was little more than a waterproofed sheet that I laid over a length of rope tied between two trees and staked down on the ends. I spent the rest of the daylight boiling water and mixing it with the dry rations to have my first dinner in the wild. It was more than disappointing.

  The night was surprisingly pleasant. Although I could hear insects, the night was thankfully bereft of biting ones, and the cool air was as comfortable as I could have hoped for in my makeshift lodging.

  In the morning I collecting all of my things into my pack and planned on scouting a bit further. Before I left I found a white stone, and place it as marker to remind myself where my first camp had been. As I laid the rock I saw the tracks of a large cat. A mountain lion, I assumed, but bigger, maybe a tiger, but I brushed the absurd thought away. Had I looked harder, I would have noticed its tracks, in some places, had laid over my own.

  The pleasant hike to survey my surroundings became increasingly difficult as the horizontal landscape gave way to something more vertical as I ascended the first peak. I burned much of the day, and all of my water, underestimating the size of the hill. As I neared the peak I cursed to myself as I was greeted with a false summit. The ground flattened for a way, and continued up another quarter mile to the legitimate peak.

  I decided to let myself rest and wandered over to a shady spot against the rock face. As I sat down to check my rations I felt an uncomfortable crunch beneath me. Reaching down I lifted up a piece of bone. I had sat in some animal’s meal, and shot up, patting my back frantically to remove any traces of the cadaver. I inspected the animal carcass. It was large, a deer or wolf maybe, but it was too decomposed and scattered to know for sure. I decided it would be best to keep moving.

  I reached the peak late in the day and reserved my little victory until I had surveyed my surroundings, which were still a mystery to me. More hills in every direction, mountains to the east, and dense trees to the north. The north, I decided, the trees probably obscured streams, and those would lead me to more water.

  I began descending the mountain and stopped at a plateau that hid a shallow cave in the rock. I was able to stake the dog tent to the entrance and lay out my blanket and bedroll enough to fill the small space creating a comfortable refuge for myself. I used what sticks and brush I could salvage from the rocky terrain and made a small fire a few feet from my shelter using just half of a thunderstone. Even with the meager tinder it still burned bright, and long, and roared late into the night as I began falling to sleep.

  I don’t know at what time of the night it came, but a deep feline rumbling stirred me awake. I laid, motionless and silent, as the fire cast its shadow in full view across the tarp. It wasn’t a tiger, it was a lion, and it was enormous. It paced, smelling the air. Sweat permeated my body and my mind raced for me to grab the knife, or grab the hatchet, or do anything, but I was frozen.

  As the enormous predator paced the bass of its heavy, gravely purring shook me in the teeth. When it passed its tail cast the shadow of a long whipping appendage ending in a sharp talon-like barb. It paced like that for what felt like the rest of my life, which it very well may have been, but instead, it grew bored and slowly slunk away down the mountain. I held my breath, listening for its rumbling purrs and they faded into nothing. I didn’t sleep again that night.

  At first light I collected my things quickly and poured sand onto the fire.

  Most of my education at the academy as an apprentice was reading books of incantations, potions, and spells. Not tracking wildlife. My hands were still shaking as I slung my gear over my shoulder and began my descent. I wish I had chosen a flaming sword.

  I continued a quick pace for most of the day, not stopping to rest. I wanted to create as big of a distance between me and that creature as possible. It became increasingly difficult as the foliage began sprouting up around me as I moved further and further into the trees.

[roryedd]